(A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice) "Texas Hold 'Em, the game James McManus's 2003 memoir Positively Fifth Street brought out of the cardrooms and into the streets, is more popular than ever. In fact, McManus argues in his [2009] book that bluffing, raising, sandbagging and risking everything in the hope of winning more are still part of 'American DNA.' 'My goal is to show how the story of poker helps to explain who we are,' McManus writes. He tracks the evolution of poque, a French parlor game that made landfall in 19th-century New Orleans, from Mississippi steamboats to Civil War battlefields to American kitchen tables, the White House and the Internet.... The author is a reliable guide to a pastime that, as poker players form lobbying organizations and Rep. Barney Frank advocates the legalization of online gambling, seems less like subculture than culture. After all, if Ben Affleck can become California's poker champion, why shouldn't we all be able to ante up?"—Washington Post